Little by little, people are realising that Europe is at war. Politicians are trying so hard not to say it because of the implications, but there’s only so long you can keep your head buried in the sand.
We’re under constant attacks from Russia… drones, sabotage, cyberattacks, propaganda campaigns derailing our elections…
And Russia is winning, they already have neutralized if not subjugated the US, but most of Europe is also heading towards that outcome, and fast. Russia is not this near omnipotent 5D chess mastermind behind all of the scenes in all of politics all across the West, but they are terrifyingly good at exploiting existing trends and influencing trajectories just so and they have been at it with great continuity over many decades. It's starting to really pay off. At this point, it's hard to imagine how the next German federal government could be anything else than either a completely dead-on-arrival coalition of polar opposites that only barely hangs on to keep the AfD out of government but will be unable to do anything at all, or an extremely Russia-friendly government the AfD is part of if not leads that is pretty much certain to continue within the EU what Trump started within NATO. Both outcomes serve Russia well, and the establishment has pretty much handed them that opportunity without meaningful resistance.
NATO is certainly weaker with the USA having lost her mind. But Russia seems to have gotten herself into a total quagmire in Ukraine and she is bleeding badly with no end in sight. Nobody is winning here.
I think of it the other way: EU politicians want war but are not able to say it out loud and clear. Instead we get a bunch of "russian sabotage" all over the place with flimsy evidence to back it. Get the simple people into a paranoid state and use it to justify decisions which are already made. Classic FUD.
And the people seem to swallow it.
Yeah mate whatever. Instead of scrolling twitter or whatever, donate some of your actual time to Ukraine and start getting up to speed with what Russia is really doing, straight from the source.
Otherwise you’re just going to continue being what is commonly called a “useful idiot”.
Wont donate anything to Ukraine – hopefully the part of my family from there has managed to bring out their boys. Yes, busification is a thing over there, "mate".
If the useful idiots here in Europe are strong enough to back a political decision to go to war with Russia, I'm out. But you can go and fight, "mate".
Edit: Seeing you're profiteering from the war [0], case closed I guess.
[0]https://sevenseed.eu/
"Seven Seed is a Brussels-based group dedicated to empowering the European startup ecosystem, focused on the technologies that matter most: Artificial Intelligence and Defence."
"close to Renault's factory in the town of Cléon", which is now preparing to start manufacturing drones for the French military, in collaboration with Ukrainian military-industrial groups.
Most consumers know Renault as an ordinary car manufacturer but also worth mentioning it's a major manufacturer of armored vehicles for the French armed forces.
Yes. And in combination it completely rules out the suggestion that the Netherlands attack is some kind of local activist protest. (The France attack resulted in several grave injuries and could have just as easily resulted in dozens of deaths.)
No I agree with that, but if it's "activists" I would expect them to claim credit otherwise it's all pointless. The same doesn't follow for Russian fuckery, IMO.
The easiest way to hide the incompetence of local european politics, be it expensive diesel or the upcoming economic prices is to blame it all on russia.
Volkswagen is laying off 100k of workers, because they can't make cars people can afford anymore... blame russia! Germans fed up with merz and vote afd? Russia! Macron doesn't even have 20% of support in polls anymore? Russia! Stub your pinky on the corner of the bed? russia!
Old German politicians had many opportunities to say something about the genocide. They decided to support Israel instead and (maybe) this choice played some part in their demise. They miscalculated how angry was the people and basically fired themselves. Should know better after seeing the Democrats fall in the same trap.
I'm surprised people jump to Russia instead of the radical left. Left-wing environmentalist terrorists attached shunts to rail lines to short out the safety signals back in 2020 in the US [0]. Vulkangruppe has been conducting sabotage in Germany, and a 48-year-old named Daniel V was arrested on suspicion of sabotaging Germany's electrical grid because he hated fossil fuels [1]. The French had left-wing environmentalist terrorists sabotaging the rail network in 2024 [2]. The left has been conducting infrastructure attacks all over Europe this decade, but it's probably more politically expedient to blame Russia.
- Extinction Rebellion and other environmental groups always claim the action pretty quickly and openly in NL.
- If you look at the locations of sabotage, it’s all close to the ‘farmer heartland’. Most left-wing and environmental groups would do it in the randstad.
Most likely it’s farmers. They announced very heavy protests today and also burnt hay near highways to create smoke clouds. Possibly nudged by Russian operatives because the like to sow dissent.
Also extinction rebellion goes after motorways, not trains which are a sustainable mode of transport they stand behind.
No I'm pretty sure this would have been a farmer splinter group. Since the last time they protested with tractors on the motorways they caused a deadly accident, they won't be getting away with that anymore.
> Vulkangruppe has been conducting sabotage in Germany
It's important to note that AFAIK nothing in this direction has been proven. After the attack, some people claiming to be part of Vulkangruppe claimed they did the attack, but it's all just claims.
Also important to note: the Vulkangruppe's letter mentions JD Vance, but spells the name "Vans" - almost like the authors usually write/read about him in Cyrillic texts.
As far as sabotage goes doing it in a way that is disruptive but causes no permanent damage is a bit odd. As a protest, however, it makes perfect sense.
The similarity is also timing and geopolitical context. It doesn't have to be an identical method to merit the comparison as the means for sabotage can be variable.
Of course more similarity would be a stronger signal, but we shouldn't miss the forest (rail sabotage) for the trees (shorted circuit).
I don't think they're similar at all, the synchronicity notwithstanding. The sabotage in France was a 250-300 kg rail fragment (per your link). The objects in the Netherlands look much smaller, and look like they're intended to short-circuit the two rails to trigger a signal fault. In one place they found car jumper cables with clamps attached to both rails,
Not asserting this is definitely a Russian op (given the amount of simultaneous farmers' protests and all in NL today), but their modus operandi for foreign operations of this kind involves paying random thugs a few hundred to a couple thousand euros to carry out acts of sabotage using whatever items they have on hand. The items don't need to match, the people involved don't need to know each other.
It's odd that you would jump to "Russian op" and hedging by _not_ asserting that it is "definitely" one; but it very well could also be and arguably even is far more likely an act by someone who would benefit form scaring the public and manipulating the affected governments. I'm not going to assert at all, one way or another who it may be because it could be several actors with interests in producing outcomes of fear among the public and animating the respective governments and the clowns in the EU to take actions without thinking.
One thing that logic would dictate though is that Russia would be extremely low on the list of suspects since they gain nothing and are negatively affected in every manner possible by being in any way behind such actions.
It's why we have so many catastrophic and calamitous events in our history because people never ask themselves who may be benefitting from the act that is immediately used to manipulate people through fear. In spite of having been told and explained a long time ago and many times since, you should always ask you who benefits, cui bono. Russia does not benefit from scaring the populace into supporting the murderous and war mongering governments and the maniacal ruling parasites that control them in order to profit from war as they send your children in to the meat grinder.
> One thing that logic would dictate though is that Russia would be extremely low on the list of suspects since they gain nothing and are negatively affected in every manner possible by being in any way behind such actions.
Or one could choose not to take this in isolation from all the acts of brazen and identified sabotage Russia does, slashing deep-sea cables in international waters with their shadow fleets, organizing psyop campaigns throughout the entire continent that can be traced back right to their government units, and so on :-)
"brazen and identified" is doing a lot of work here. IIRC the cable thing was an anchor accident, and everyone is doing psyop campaigns (Western psyops being far more advanced and sophisticated than their enemies). Nord Stream was definitely not an accident and we know who did that.
Implying that Russia somehow invented or is the undisputed leader in "psyops" is a popular hallmark of a low-information civilian, a narrative promoted by arch-propagandists like Peter Pomerantsev and Anne Applebaum.
"Propagandist" is not a palatable job title, so propagandists often masquerade under different words. For example, the US government's official foreign propaganda agency is called "US Agency for Global Media".
If Anne "it's okay to kill journalists in wartime" Applebaum is not a prominent Western propagandist, then who is?
\One thing that logic would dictate though is that Russia would be extremely low on the list of suspects since they gain nothing and are negatively affected in every manner possible by being in any way behind such actions.
They are known for actions that negatively affect them and everyone around. That's kinda their whole thing.
Look, for me this shit is personal. I am the person whose life the |redacted| makes worse. I get that boring explaination is not exciting to you for the reasons of neurological kind, this is a good enough model with predictive properties that help me be alive and have all my body parts in the factory installed places
One of the only few sensible comments in this entire thread.
The ruling class in Europe needs this war for economic reasons. They're orchestrating and selling it to the public by constant fear mongering and provoking conflict.
Even in a relatively intelligent crowd like this forum, people are gullible and easily guided to hate the boogeyman: red ("communists", Russia, China); brown (immigrants, Muslims, Iran); or green ("far left", environmental and civil rights activists). They hate us for our freedoms!
Be afraid, people, and keep funnelling billions of your tax money into the pockets of the rich who profit from mass murder. No wonder we have endless conflict and fascism on the rise around the world. There's so much money to be made from war and defrauding the public for generations.
How can we not see it, it's the same playbook again and again.
The last thing ‘the ruling class in Europe needs’ is a pan European war! Stability and the system that stability enables is what has put them into positions of power and prosperity in the first place. They actively don’t want outright war and Russia knows this, which is why Russia continually provokes and gets away with acts of sabotage.
>Stability and the system that stability enables is what has put them into positions of power and prosperity in the first place.
The system is already unstable due to the rampart growth of wealth inequality, especially after covid, disproportionately affecting the purchasing power and CoL of the working class, while those with assets have seen their wealth ballon.
There was recently this german lady reporter who posed as actively pro-Putin for few months and it didn't take long for fsb/gru to come to her online.
It started small, just check this or that, little favor there but soon escalated to proper spycraft. Some other folks reported having death threats against family. Its for peanuts, few hundred euros mostly. They just need to find the dumbest and most desperate folks to commit acts of treason.
The chances of this being real are basically zero, or Russia would be getting double agented, and reverse intelling themselves, out the arse. Instead all we get are attempts to connect random events, of which there are endless viable suspects, to Russia.
It's fair to say that if one jumps in the middle of a fight, they should expect to get punched, but it's also fair to say that for now Russia has been avoiding throwing much in the way of punches.
I'm not saying such claims are not being published, I'm saying they're likely false because they make about as much sense as a country blowing up its own pipeline. Espionage outside of war is an extremely sensitive issue, and were any country trivially baitable, they'd end up getting played hard. Not only would it eliminate deniability, but you also open up the door to major counter-intel operations and getting more insight into the operations, potentially on a massive scale, of an adversary.
I suspect this is why there's endless stories, in pretty much every country, of dissidents handing over information to 'enemy states' who are in fact just domestic law enforcement. These people glow to everybody, and no foreign power's going to touch them.
This has been extremely well documented. They are just paying some losers a few hundred euros to throw a molotow cocktail somewhere, that's it. As for the Germans, you know that they investigated the NS incident and are prosecuting the Ukrainian perpetrators. Now when the perpetrators are Russian, everything is fake of course.
Russia blowing up its own pipeline was also 'extremely well documented.' One of the many reasons that propaganda is self defeating is because when done effectively, as it has been with Ukraine, the people doing it eventually begin to be unable to tell what people really think due to self censorship and other issues. Have you really convinced everybody, or just made them smile and nod?
Germany is now finding out the answer to that question, and I expect it's mere foreshadowing for much of the rest of Europe. The exact same happened with the Soviet Union. Gorbachev grew up during the Stalin years, alongside all of the joys that entails. He smiled and nodded all the way until he was at the top in power, at which point he almost immediately set about undermining the systems that had been in place.
No, Russia being behind NS was never extremely well documented. There was lots of speculation and the German police did investigate and came to the conclusion that it had been the Ukrainians. Now the German police did investigate and came to the conclusion that it was the Russians. That's it.
By this standard, nothing is well documented. The Western propaganda machine was building up an extensive case against Russia. I suspect the reason it was dialed back was only because they overestimated the gullibility of the public - nobody believed them.
Operation Mockingbird. [1] Now let's bring that into modern times with the internet, digital communications, the complete degradation of values from government and business alike, and LLMs on top of it all now. It's why nothing makes any sense. Because it's just lies force fed on people alongside actions to encourage self censorship.
How does some chump who gets paid to stick potatoes into tailpipes become a double agent? Being a double agent requires the ability to hurt the side you're ostensibly working for. The potato guy can show Telegram chats where a guy called Alexey, or maybe an entirely non-Russian name, gave him a job.
Correct, this is their exact MO and has been for decades. "Random thug" recruitment notwithstanding, part of the point of such ops is to prove to themselves that they can, in fact, reach out and touch a target - i.e., exercising the entire operational chain from C&C down to the minutiae of execution. A kind of integration test for sabotage, if you will. (Not saying this specific incident is or isn't anything in particular, just commenting on the general MO.)
If one were in a charitable mood, one could think of this as a "just in case" measure of ongoing capability assurance in the event of a broader conflict. In a less charitable mood, one might imagine it as preparation for proactive action. In either case, if you don't do this kind of sub-threshold stuff at least occasionally, you often discover that when a real conflict erupts, the capabilities you thought you had are in fact literally or figuratively rusty. (See the Russian army's logistical debacle early in the Ukraine war for a recent example.)
Most top tier nation states do some version of this; each one has its own style. The Russians are somewhat unusual in that they care less than most who knows or suspects them of this kind of activity.
>The sinking of Rainbow Warrior, codenamed Opération Satanique, was an act of French state-terrorism carried out on 10 July 1985. The event was described by France as a "covert operation" by the "action" branch of the French foreign intelligence agency, the Directorate-General for External Security (DGSE). During the operation, two operatives (both French citizens) sank the flagship of the Greenpeace fleet, Rainbow Warrior, at the Port of Auckland on her way to a protest against a planned French nuclear test in Moruroa. Fernando Pereira, a photographer, drowned on the sinking ship.
France provides Ukraine with targeting information that allows Ukraine to strike deep inside Russia, including industrial targets. So France is directly contributing to attacks against non-military target in Russia, yes.
Hm, that seems a bit of a double-edged sword, geopolitically speaking: In a narrow sense, Russia might prefer that framing to justify punitive sabotage against European targets, but if "targeting data equals enemy", there are other effects:
1. It means Russia is claiming they can do the same to the US, as it provides some intelligence to Ukraine.
2. Since Russia's been giving targeting information and weapons to Iran, it'd means they are a US enemy, and chunks of the current Republican administration that are sympathetic to Russia may have to walk carefully when it comes to future charges of Treason.
Like when we claimed that the russians had sabotaged their own pipeline rather than just stop pumping gas, after Biden declared he'd blow that thing up in case of conflict, and we are still supposed to believe it was the russians?
To achieve what exactly? All the Russians would get from this is BBC warmongering articles and increased resolve of EU politicians.
The latter is desired by Ukraine and by the US, which wants more proxies against Russia.
The only known operation was the Nord Stream sabotage done by Ukraine. I have enough of this. If the US is so desperate to weaken Russia, please attack through the Bering Strait and leave the EU alone.
It occurred on Prinsjesdag, which is a particularly popular time of year for the Dutch to protest. If it was Russia trying to make a point, it was a wasted effort as they did it on a day where it is lost in the noise.
It's like if Russia decided to set off a few fires and explosions in the USA on July 4th. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
Who designs a signaling system where a ‘major disruption’ can be caused by a jumper cable applied at any point along potentially hundreds of kms? What about resiliency and fallbacks for something that critical?
Fear not! I’m sure the European Commission will promptly ban jumpstart cable ownership without a license.
"Live by the sword, die by the sword", meaning that the Western-European military alliance should also become aware of the consequences of being involved in a war against Russia, there's no hiding behind the bush anymore since they've started doing that. And before anyone starts crying: "These are civilian targets!", which would be true, I'd remind them that the Wildberries logistics centers in Russia were also civilian targets.
Russia's biggest asset is general apathy in the rich West. People with names written in funny script that sound like Bond characters shooting at each other a thousand kilometers away is hard to get Peter and Paddy and Pierre and Pontus and Pablo living comfortable lives with comfortable jobs to give a shit about. There's a reason Western governments make sure the media prints stories about intercepting Russian jets.
Bringing the war to them and getting the public to want their government to commit blood and treasure to doing something about it is a ferociously poor strategic decision from the Kremlin. "That Putin killed a 17 year old French girl on her way to school on the train" is unlikely to cause the public in the West to back down.
I don't think that funding far right parties, neo nazi groups, threatening with nuclear holocaust, sending drones into neighbors, occupying neighbors territories, etc is aimed at the "goal of bringing apathy to Western Europeans."
But somehow you're trying to spin it into it's Western governments are the ones wanting to bring war?
You know, the guys that had a huge part of their economy on top of Russian gas? The guys that closed their eyes when part of Georgia was occupied? Or ignored Crimea occupation?
Those people are the ones who watched Russia kill 200 people in the flight MH17 without consequences.
Of course, the only reason wild berries got hit is because Putin started the war. The only reason why why Russians (and Russian speaking Ukrainians) are dying in large numbers is Putin.
The pro-russian historic fanfiction asserts that "Putin was forced to war or NATO would have expanded to ukraine or something"
There is no conceivable scenario where Russians would have worse safety than what Putin's decision caused. Heck, the long range drones attacking Russia today would simple not exist.
People say trump is Putin's stooge, but honestly Putin looks like a western plant. Nobody else since Stalin has killed as many Russians than Putin.
russia declared war on whole west (including this open forum) in 2014, if you cared about the topic a bit you would know that. They are not even hiding it, quite contrary. Attacks keep happening basically daily in entire Europe now, thats a text book declaration of war from russia.
They repeatedly declared razing whole western Europe and western world with nuclear weapons, annihilating hundreds of millions. They repeatedly stated their goal is to at least restore former USSR with eastern bloc acting as a shield/nuclear battlefield at all costs, same as it was during cold war.
Then they started their military push, and if Ukraine didn't fight back with everything they had they may have stopped only at Austria/German eastern border (probably West Germany one).
But you should know all this mister troll, don't you. I don't mind, repeating (sad) facts about russia can be a hobby and internet should be full of it.
Hay here it is: The idiot of the day award. Go move to russia. Hopefully we will send back their millions of "proud" migrants that are swarming Europe still.
> the Wildberries logistics centers in Russia were also civilian targets
They've now hidden the label, but Wildberries carry almost a 1/4 million items tagged "Everything for the SMO" ("special military operation"), so hardly a civilian target. Ukraine has been highly disciplined in going after military targets, other than energy, which of course also feeds the Russian war machine.
There is a big difference between starting fires in a warehouse which gives most people a chance to escape, and being like the Russians who were murdering and raping civilians in Dobas etc, firing missiles non-stop into civilian areas of Kyiv.
Surely there is a lot of Russian-motivated sabotage going on in Europe, but there's another group that might be motivated:
exactly today, a major farmer demonstration was already planned. They way they usually go ahead in the Netherlands is drive with their tractors over the highways towards The Hague, where our government is based. Obviously this leads to massive traffic jams.
A simultaneous disruption of the Dutch railways would add some extra effect to the expected traffic chaos.
Quite easy to go from a misdemeanor to terrorism charge if you sabotage the train network. IMHO likely those ** farmers causing insane amounts of damage while getting a slap on the wrist every time, that has to end. At least the climate activists only block one highway which you can work around. Unless it turns out it's them. Then they need be treated the same but it's not their MO.
Last week we had four train-truck collisions at Polish level crossings resulting in derailment and passenger death, and afaik 2 or 3 involved foreign truck drivers.
Leaving aside the irony in seeing the "peaceful" EU (who bet it all on Uncle Sam) now going on full warmongering and wanting to spend 3% of its GDP on warfare, the serious issue here is the lack of will of politicians to punish the authors of such acts, which ruin society for everybody.
44 person injured and a young woman between life and death. Yet when the perpetrators are caught, we'll have journalists and judges relaying the official tune of the EU: "criminals are victims too".
They'll get a slap on the wrist and be able to ruin society again in no time.
When shall the left accept that people putting 300 kilograms of rails to try to kill people has only one solution: shackles and a heavy ball?
Where do you draw the line between "we're all beautiful butterflies" and "some psychos need to be scruffed by the neck and bowed into lifetime submission"?
What does this have to do with this.. .. The reflexive urge to blame everything on Russia or China on this site (and others) is really funny, ya'll are trained sheep.
I knew before clicking it will be one of the things they say. people are sheeps. they will say whatever they think is right up to a limit. then they will break this limit and punish everyone that is deviating from it. this is what happened in nazi germany, soviet union, china and in the US under biden and I can already see the premises of the next term of US presidency through the lindsay clancy reaction from millions of women. to me it feels like we broke this limit in the modern developed world now. sad that as humans we cant use our brains for better than following what our hiveminds say is truth
Who did it is irrelevant. The more important thing is who the propaganda is blaming. Then we know what the elites (behind this piece of propaganda) want.
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Yes, a dangerous provocation which - had the helicopter been hit - could have led to serious consequences.
Also, very much unlikely to be related to the issue of activists sabotaging the Dutch railways. There's hardly a weekend which goes by without some activist group doing something stupid in the Netherlands, often 'climate' activists but sometimes others - 'palestine' being another popular 'cause'. In a Dutch newspaper there was a suggestion that this was related to upcoming actions by farmers but I doubt it, they tend to be more rational in their activism by taking to the motorways in their tractors to slow down (or stop) traffic.
I think national news indeed is somewhat carefully suggesting farmers (ie [0]), actually it looks like it is escalating and they burning hay now. This article speaks of "Radical Farmer Leaders".
The NOS is not the most unbiased news source in the Netherlands which is unfortunate. If it is indeed 'radical farm leaders' who are behind these sabotage actions they have turned up the temperature quite a bit and stand to lose a lot of support from the public. It would be a strange thing to do since there is not much overlap between farming and railways in the Netherlands, a small country with a strong agricultural sector which' products mostly travel by road, water and air.
The climate activists mostly do something stupid like obstructing traffic, unlike the farmers, who obstruct traffic in a way you apparently consider rational.
I don't get what is wrong with this ? Even the U.S. Navy ships fire warning flares at other vessels when they approach close. And the Danish military explicitly said that the helicopter was carrying out a reconnaissance flight "observing the Russian vessel".
Do that to the US Navy and you will find yourself the target of a flare too.
Yes, signal flares are fired frequently by the USN. This was common to the point of not even making the news. There are dozen examples of this in the Gulf alone. If you add the qualifier of a "neutral" nation, then please note that Denmark is not neutral. Denmark provides extensive, long-term military and financial support to Ukraine.
No, the USN generally does not shoot flares directly at people, but just near them, because i expect them to be professionals and aware of the damage a flare can make when it hits a helicopter and sets it alight...
> he US Navy just shoots down aircraft who come close. :). Famous example: Vincennes shot down Iran Air 655, kill
Ok now im sure that you are a russian troll. You have one (1) example from decades ago. Russia/Iran downed 3 in the last decade alone and a lot more during the cold war...
And Arming Ukraine IS the neutral position because good people support victims of aggression.
What's wrong with it? It put the helicopter at risk and was a deliberate act of provocation.
> Even the U.S. Navy ships fire warning flares at other vessels when they approach close.
Yes. A helicopter is not a vessel. These kind of monitoring exercises are common amongst both Russians and Americans when operating near each other or their territorial waters.
Russians frequently overfly American and NATO craft. Russia has also been committing acts of sabotage around the world, but more specifically has been cutting undersea communication cables, so they are absolutely worthy of scrutiny.
The Russian Ambassador to Denmark stated that Russia would “thoroughly investigate all the circumstances of the incident”. That's not exactly a hardline statement indicating Russia knows it was in the right.
> Russia has also been committing acts of sabotage around the world, but more specifically has been cutting undersea communication cables
Do note that the later investigations did not establish Russian responsibility and investigators found no evidence of Russian sabotage. Refer to WSJ & Reuters articles on this. Can you point me to a specific incident in which Russian sabotage was established ?
So today's the yearly presentation of the new budget, with protests expected in several places. Whether this sabotage campaign is (part of a) misguided protest action or something else is yet to be determined.
That does mean that I would not automatically jump to conclusions about Russia or war or whatever; since much of national public policy is presented today, it's also a popular day to express disagreement, and apparently some farmers had already announced they would be doing so today.
(I'd assume the BBC reporter to be aware that Prinsjesdag is today, and that they'd mention that fact in this article, but apparently not.)
AfD is a result of people wanting something and the government doing the opposite... this means that people are looking for an Alternative (intentionally capitalized here).
People just want a nice cozy job, enough money to get an apartment/house, buy the basics they need and live in a safe environment. If you provide those, no one is looking for alternatives.... when one of your bigger companies announces letting go of 100k people in the next few years, when you need concrete blocks protecting your chistmas markets, when you're deciding between eating and paying for diesel for your car to get to work, then you're looking for Alternatives.
Check out what the party actually plans. It's the exact opposite of what those people that vote for it need. The demographic is based on uninformedness, not "they just want to live a normal life".
Interestingly this mechanism contributed a lot to Brexit in my opinion, whenever there was legislation the politicians wanted to enact but knew would be unpopular with the voters they'd blame the EU and wring their hands saying there was nothing to be done, while in the background gold-plating the legislation far beyond what the EU was even asking for. This also made it easy for populists to point to many absurd examples of the EU being comically bureaucratic, when a lot of the more nonsensical ones were literally domestic additions. When the referendum happened, the consequences were obvious to everyone.
While no Brexiteer myself, I personally would want to see the European Parliament get a lot more powers and influence before I threw my wholehearted support behind rejoining. Half the problem with the EU is that it's seen as not particularly democratic as a place for legislation to originate, and giving the elected organ more power (including the power to propose legislation in its own right, and dismiss legislation proposed by the Commission with much more prejudice) would go a long way to addressing that I think. The Parliament needs to be more, well, parliamentary in how it functions.
Might be related to today's yearly 'Prinsjesdag' in the Netherlands:
The day on which the reigning monarch of the Netherlands addresses a joint session of the States-General of the Netherlands (consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives) to give the Speech from the Throne (Dutch: Troonrede), similar to the annual State of the Union in the United States or the British State Opening of Parliament. This speech sets out the main features of government policy for the coming parliamentary session.
Depends on how it's done I think: breaking stuff vs sitting on it. And sitting on a highway is also quite visibly claiming the action, that is not clear in this case.
If this is XR, would be very dumb and against their message.
Yes and no. "rede" is a noun and has two syllables (ray-də) and means address (as in Gettysburg address). It's an archaic word, nowaways we would use "toespraak" (speech) or "lezing" (lecture). The word does share its origin with the modern English "to read", but no Dutch speaker would interpret "rede" to mean the same as a parent reading a child a bedtime story.
Putin’s exit narrative requires escalation. Defeat vs Ukraine is a pathetic wound- “we would have won if it weren’t for.. europe” is preferable to narcissistic permanent victimhood.
Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
This is very much why I find most people's AI doom scenarios trite.
Humans are useful, easily manipulated operatives in the medium AIs are conversant in and we already have evidence of agents doing exactly this in arguing for PR requests (likely with prompting by an operator but still).
I would be surprised if it wasn’t by Russia. Russian infrastructure is being systematically destroyed by Ukraine with funding, training, intelligence and materiel from Europe. This is an attempt to discourage European support by disrupting Europeans.
Ockham's razor may be? Big protests are common on Prinsjesdag, particularly when sensitive decisions or policies are made. A local protest organisation is therefore significantly more likely than an organized foreign sabotage. If I were Putin and had foreign agents in the Netherlands I certainly wouldn't expose them this physically.
Likely organized by farmer protest groups (FDF for example) to protest against emission restriction regulation. They are known for their dangerous stunts, including driving their tractors on the highway and spraying manure on government buildings. These actions are tolerated by the Dutch police, which willingly and purposefully refuses to punish these acts.
Farmers and right wing people in all of Europe are actively being disinformed by Russian intelligence service and either wilfully ignores it or too incompetent to realize it.
Russia spends a huge amount on manipulating western citizens via the internet, let's not play dumb about that. You may not think that it has any effect, but apparently Russian intelligence does.
We're all being misinformed by various interest groups. If you think you're immune and have some perfect understanding of reality, you're kidding yourself.
Look to Birmingham in the UK for evidence of the same deference. Many have been on strike since 2025. The city was a rat infested public waste dump for nearly 3 months until the government hired private firms to do the waste handling while the public worker strike action continued.
Rubbish. They don't want to. The tractors have license plates, allowing them to be pursued after the fact, and the NL police have firearms if they want to get spicy.
There have been a number of attacks in Europe of the form "deranged person drives vehicle into crowd". I'm sure the police wouldn't sit back and shrug if that was done with a tractor. The vehicle doesn't have magic properties, the driver has police protection.
The protestors tape their license plates. And I'm happy to report Dutch police generally doesn't draw guns on people who are no direct threat.
And how is the "vehicle driven into crowd" even relevant here? Nobody's using these tractors to kill (intentionally), but they're just many and hard to stop.
> If the garbage men started dumping the contents of garbage bags in public places I bet they will not be given a free pass.
I mean, they wouldn't have to, they just need to stop cleaning it up. Such an action likely will be given a free pass, anything other than that is strikebreaking which is either illegal or heavily discouraged depending on jurisdiction.
Browsing through comments I'm not really surprised. It seems like Russia is everything Europeans think about daily.
Guys, your railroads used to work very bad all the way along. Just fix them at last, and ensure safety.
Putin must be really happy - whatever happens in Europe, he's blamed for it, making him look omnipotent. Most countries would love to have that kind of power.
It’s so much more likely to be the farmers, but it's easier to blame Putin and do nothing about it than it is to stop ruining the farmers and risk angering the cosmopolitan politicians whose votes in the parliament you need.
Putin became a meme. He's almighty and weak at the same time. He's the Zar, Stalin AND Hitler in one person. He's been cloned at least a dozen times but seems to have a grave illness and will die soon. On the one hand it's funny to watch how people are losing their minds over it but on the other it just prevents a clear dialogue and assessment of a politician.
Did nato enlargement caused war in Moldova, war in Georgia, war in Ichkeriya, support for serbian war criminals in ex-Yugoslavia, war in Georgia again, war in Syria, war in Ukraine? I wonder which of these countries are in nato
Yes, I know Russia. I got to know it even better lately: It's waging war on my continent right now, and murdering my fellow Europeans and their families. I've seen its bombs fall on schools, malls, churches and libraries. I've seen videos of its conscripts having fun, bragging about stealing, raping and murdering civilians.
If you're on the side of history that North Korea supports, you're on the wrong side of it.
Did you consider that NATO enlargement is just the argument to align campist left with Russia, based on a misinterpreted statement, "not one inch", debunked by Gorbachev himself?
What makes that true, and not the propaganda about western degeneracy? What about the propaganda about Ukraine being ruled by Nazis? What about the propaganda about Ukraine being ruled by Jews? What about Russia being the defenders of the white race and traditional values? What about the propaganda about Ukraine just being a confused Russians? What about the propaganda about restoring the historical lands of Russia? What about the propaganda about Ukraine preparing to attack Russia? What about the propaganda about the supposed oppression of Russian speakers in Ukraine?
And ultimately, are you familiar with the term "firehose of falsehood"? Because unless you are really familiar with the subject and not just sprinkled by superficial propaganda, you might just believe the bits you agree with and ignore the rest, falling into the confirmation bias that Russian propaganda relies so much upon.
The tropes about Putin in my sarcastic post above are all from western media or were said by high ranking Western officials at some point in time. The cloned Putin / Putin doubles thing was claimed by Budanov himself as far as I can remember. And Kiev never lies, does it?
Sad to see so many people here in the comments jump the gun and think of Russia.
Some local context: Today is "prinsjesdag" when the budget is announced. Protests are common, particularly when sensitive decisions are made. There are multiple organized protest movements in the country that have used physical force in the past and some of them had announced protests for today.
Could it be Russia? Yes. But local protests seem significantly more likely. Moreover, if I were Putin I wouldn't expose my foreign agents this physically. I would use them in much more insidious ways such as actually starting or supporting these protest movements. In a similar vein: Could any shooting in the US be caused by foreign agents? Maybe. But usually there is a much simpler explanation; guns and bitterness.
Protests draw attention to your cause. This doesn't draw attention to anything, it is straightforward sabotage. Neither is it in line with how typical protestors operated before.
You are jumping to the assumption that foreign agents wouldn't be exposed, but any willing idiot can be bought to conduct such activity. Recent research in Denmark showed that sabotage comes, most likely, from locals, persuaded by foreign actors.
So two things could be true at once. A local 'protestor', disengaged through some issue (whether climate, farming or anything else), persuaded to join some 'resistance' by anyone.
I don't expect this to be supported by local protesting groups, like FDF or XR, either. Way too risky, media-wise.
Define Europeans - us Poles absolutely understand the danger. In fact I'd say we're already at war with Russia, the way they attack our democracy, our institutions and politics daily. But someone in Portugal might not see it the same way we do.
Yes, obviously - but I'm not sure how that's related. Or maybe actually in fact it speaks of the fact that some terrorist acts within Russia were commited by or on the order of the Russian government.
Many, maybe even most Russians would like to be part of Europe, even if they would complain about the terms that would enable them to join pan European organizations. For now they are just potential Europeans.
Russia being part of Europe is a fact and not a preference. It seems like you want to see Europe as being united against Russia instead of this being an internal European conflict, which it is.
Russia's urban centers being mostly located on the European continent doesn't make Russia European. They are, deservingly for starting a war in Europe, excluded from treaties enabling free trade and free movement. That's not a conflict with consequences limited to Europe, and the US apparently needs to be reminded, no matter who pays for the wedding reception.
Or maybe they do realise it how close it is.
It is not a certainty yet, but we can see russia circling.
No idea when it would start but there are only two outcomes I can see:
* Russia doesn't use nukes and get flattened. They don't have the troops, material or finances to deploy on even half the frontline.
* Russia use nukes and get flattened (and so does a chunk of EU). French doctrine when it come to nuclear warfare is quite agressive. Not idea how london would react, but major russian cities and/or ressource hubs would see retalations on kind.
I don't know how much support or opposition from the population such actions would have, but people are getting fed up with external threat burning so much of our governments time and attention on external issues (brexit, babysitting trump, russian threat) that internal issues get further pushed to the future.
It should be noted that today is Prinsjesdag and the new yearly budget is being presented, or however that is properly translated in english. Especially now that farmers are also lighting hay bales on fire next to highways the most likely explanation is nationals doing this
Out of all the ignorant comments in this thread that clearly do not know what is happening in the netherlands and are just assuming wild stuff, you made the most insane one. Congratulations.
I appreciate that you know what is going on near you and in your homeland. As the saying could go, "think locally, speak globally"? I am sorry that I have allowed the bigger picture, or mere coincidence and happenstance, to cloud my opinion of your yearly ceremony and the annoying disruption to your daily commute.
Dutch person here. I never heard of these but Prinjesdag is big national news each year. Considering that this is happening in the Netherlands, it's about as likely related to the, eh, ten days of repetitice as it is to the moon landing
Well this is natural, terrorism in Europe is almost entirely Russia-originating (and have always been, see drop to nearly zero after 1991 when Russia lost the capability).
Farmers protesting new nitrogen emissions regulation. They are also setting hay bales on fire next to highways. The rail sabotage is relatively harmless, the tracks use block signalling so if you use a conductive metal bar or jumper cables to connect the rails, the system thinks a train is present and the preceding signal will stay red.
Protests are much less effective if they can just be ignored. At the very least "lost productivity" is a very abstract harm and not something that endangers human lives directly.
That does depend on the productivity being lost. No doubt many of the people who were unable to commute that day would have been doctors and nurses.
I think it would be of a stretch to actually claim that this specific incident caused loss of life, but it’s possible to see how such wide sabotage, especially conducted over a number of days, could result in compromised emergency services and result in loss of life.
Protests also tend to be more effective if the protesters involved actually make some clear demands about what they want. Simply breaking shit isn’t much of a protest.
But its also not reasonable to let someone having grievances block the entire country. The farming industry is 1% of GDP in NL. Why do they get to hold the entire country hostage?
A similar hijack will soon(ish) become impossible, as the current train protection system will be replaced by ERTMS.
Basically, the current system works by injecting a small current signal on one rail and trying to sense it on the other rail. A train's axle shorts the rails together, so sensing it means a train is present. Or, in this instance of sabotage, a jumper wire.
ERTMS L2, which is being installed over the next decade or two, primarily uses axle counters and train position reporting, so a jumper won't do a thing. You can still fool an axle counter, but that's rather easy to fix: just drive a known-good train over the section.
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[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 164 ms ] threadWe’re under constant attacks from Russia… drones, sabotage, cyberattacks, propaganda campaigns derailing our elections…
I’m sick of it.
Otherwise you’re just going to continue being what is commonly called a “useful idiot”.
Edit: Seeing you're profiteering from the war [0], case closed I guess.
[0]https://sevenseed.eu/ "Seven Seed is a Brussels-based group dedicated to empowering the European startup ecosystem, focused on the technologies that matter most: Artificial Intelligence and Defence."
"close to Renault's factory in the town of Cléon", which is now preparing to start manufacturing drones for the French military, in collaboration with Ukrainian military-industrial groups.
Volkswagen is laying off 100k of workers, because they can't make cars people can afford anymore... blame russia! Germans fed up with merz and vote afd? Russia! Macron doesn't even have 20% of support in polls anymore? Russia! Stub your pinky on the corner of the bed? russia!
I'm French and I heard nothing of the sort, what makes you think of that?
[0] https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdwa/pr/pair-charged-interferin... [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy5zw56lnx3o [2] https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/france-leaning-towards-...
- Extinction Rebellion and other environmental groups always claim the action pretty quickly and openly in NL.
- If you look at the locations of sabotage, it’s all close to the ‘farmer heartland’. Most left-wing and environmental groups would do it in the randstad.
Most likely it’s farmers. They announced very heavy protests today and also burnt hay near highways to create smoke clouds. Possibly nudged by Russian operatives because the like to sow dissent.
But we’ll see.
No I'm pretty sure this would have been a farmer splinter group. Since the last time they protested with tractors on the motorways they caused a deadly accident, they won't be getting away with that anymore.
It's important to note that AFAIK nothing in this direction has been proven. After the attack, some people claiming to be part of Vulkangruppe claimed they did the attack, but it's all just claims.
Also important to note: the Vulkangruppe's letter mentions JD Vance, but spells the name "Vans" - almost like the authors usually write/read about him in Cyrillic texts.
Of course more similarity would be a stronger signal, but we shouldn't miss the forest (rail sabotage) for the trees (shorted circuit).
https://nos.nl/video/2631081-startkabels-van-spoor-bij-meppe... ("Startkabels van spoor bij Meppel weggehaald")
One thing that logic would dictate though is that Russia would be extremely low on the list of suspects since they gain nothing and are negatively affected in every manner possible by being in any way behind such actions.
It's why we have so many catastrophic and calamitous events in our history because people never ask themselves who may be benefitting from the act that is immediately used to manipulate people through fear. In spite of having been told and explained a long time ago and many times since, you should always ask you who benefits, cui bono. Russia does not benefit from scaring the populace into supporting the murderous and war mongering governments and the maniacal ruling parasites that control them in order to profit from war as they send your children in to the meat grinder.
Or one could choose not to take this in isolation from all the acts of brazen and identified sabotage Russia does, slashing deep-sea cables in international waters with their shadow fleets, organizing psyop campaigns throughout the entire continent that can be traced back right to their government units, and so on :-)
Implying that Russia somehow invented or is the undisputed leader in "psyops" is a popular hallmark of a low-information civilian, a narrative promoted by arch-propagandists like Peter Pomerantsev and Anne Applebaum.
As many other comments have said, cui bono?
Lol who claimed it was an "accident"? Most likely it was disgruntled Ukrainians with just enough resources and skill. And they did great work.
Anne Applebaum is a historian not a "propagandist" lol
If Anne "it's okay to kill journalists in wartime" Applebaum is not a prominent Western propagandist, then who is?
Can you answer my question?
They are known for actions that negatively affect them and everyone around. That's kinda their whole thing.
You honestly cannot be that gullible?
Hmm.
The ruling class in Europe needs this war for economic reasons. They're orchestrating and selling it to the public by constant fear mongering and provoking conflict.
Even in a relatively intelligent crowd like this forum, people are gullible and easily guided to hate the boogeyman: red ("communists", Russia, China); brown (immigrants, Muslims, Iran); or green ("far left", environmental and civil rights activists). They hate us for our freedoms!
Be afraid, people, and keep funnelling billions of your tax money into the pockets of the rich who profit from mass murder. No wonder we have endless conflict and fascism on the rise around the world. There's so much money to be made from war and defrauding the public for generations.
How can we not see it, it's the same playbook again and again.
The system is already unstable due to the rampart growth of wealth inequality, especially after covid, disproportionately affecting the purchasing power and CoL of the working class, while those with assets have seen their wealth ballon.
It started small, just check this or that, little favor there but soon escalated to proper spycraft. Some other folks reported having death threats against family. Its for peanuts, few hundred euros mostly. They just need to find the dumbest and most desperate folks to commit acts of treason.
It's fair to say that if one jumps in the middle of a fight, they should expect to get punched, but it's also fair to say that for now Russia has been avoiding throwing much in the way of punches.
I suspect this is why there's endless stories, in pretty much every country, of dissidents handing over information to 'enemy states' who are in fact just domestic law enforcement. These people glow to everybody, and no foreign power's going to touch them.
Germany is now finding out the answer to that question, and I expect it's mere foreshadowing for much of the rest of Europe. The exact same happened with the Soviet Union. Gorbachev grew up during the Stalin years, alongside all of the joys that entails. He smiled and nodded all the way until he was at the top in power, at which point he almost immediately set about undermining the systems that had been in place.
That is still bizarre to me, how it was the media mainstream.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird
If one were in a charitable mood, one could think of this as a "just in case" measure of ongoing capability assurance in the event of a broader conflict. In a less charitable mood, one might imagine it as preparation for proactive action. In either case, if you don't do this kind of sub-threshold stuff at least occasionally, you often discover that when a real conflict erupts, the capabilities you thought you had are in fact literally or figuratively rusty. (See the Russian army's logistical debacle early in the Ukraine war for a recent example.)
Most top tier nation states do some version of this; each one has its own style. The Russians are somewhat unusual in that they care less than most who knows or suspects them of this kind of activity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_Rainbow_Warrior
>The sinking of Rainbow Warrior, codenamed Opération Satanique, was an act of French state-terrorism carried out on 10 July 1985. The event was described by France as a "covert operation" by the "action" branch of the French foreign intelligence agency, the Directorate-General for External Security (DGSE). During the operation, two operatives (both French citizens) sank the flagship of the Greenpeace fleet, Rainbow Warrior, at the Port of Auckland on her way to a protest against a planned French nuclear test in Moruroa. Fernando Pereira, a photographer, drowned on the sinking ship.
Source: https://www.kyivpost.com/post/81382
1. It means Russia is claiming they can do the same to the US, as it provides some intelligence to Ukraine.
2. Since Russia's been giving targeting information and weapons to Iran, it'd means they are a US enemy, and chunks of the current Republican administration that are sympathetic to Russia may have to walk carefully when it comes to future charges of Treason.
And China has sent Iran anti air missiles and provides Russia and Iran with targeting data.
And North Korean troops all over Russia...
It's a shitshow.
Low level sabotage under the guise of hooliganism wasn't invented in Leningrad.
Bet you didn't see the uno reverso false false flag coming
Shouldn't you be shit-posting on Twitter/X? Is that all you do is shit-post?
The latter is desired by Ukraine and by the US, which wants more proxies against Russia.
The only known operation was the Nord Stream sabotage done by Ukraine. I have enough of this. If the US is so desperate to weaken Russia, please attack through the Bering Strait and leave the EU alone.
First time i'm seeing this spelling of 'Israel' or 'AIPAC'.
It's like if Russia decided to set off a few fires and explosions in the USA on July 4th. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
Fear not! I’m sure the European Commission will promptly ban jumpstart cable ownership without a license.
Bringing the war to them and getting the public to want their government to commit blood and treasure to doing something about it is a ferociously poor strategic decision from the Kremlin. "That Putin killed a 17 year old French girl on her way to school on the train" is unlikely to cause the public in the West to back down.
But somehow you're trying to spin it into it's Western governments are the ones wanting to bring war?
You know, the guys that had a huge part of their economy on top of Russian gas? The guys that closed their eyes when part of Georgia was occupied? Or ignored Crimea occupation?
Those people are the ones who watched Russia kill 200 people in the flight MH17 without consequences.
That's cultivating apathy?
The pro-russian historic fanfiction asserts that "Putin was forced to war or NATO would have expanded to ukraine or something"
There is no conceivable scenario where Russians would have worse safety than what Putin's decision caused. Heck, the long range drones attacking Russia today would simple not exist.
People say trump is Putin's stooge, but honestly Putin looks like a western plant. Nobody else since Stalin has killed as many Russians than Putin.
They repeatedly declared razing whole western Europe and western world with nuclear weapons, annihilating hundreds of millions. They repeatedly stated their goal is to at least restore former USSR with eastern bloc acting as a shield/nuclear battlefield at all costs, same as it was during cold war.
Then they started their military push, and if Ukraine didn't fight back with everything they had they may have stopped only at Austria/German eastern border (probably West Germany one).
But you should know all this mister troll, don't you. I don't mind, repeating (sad) facts about russia can be a hobby and internet should be full of it.
There are also consequences in letting Russia take Ukraine militarily.
Whatever you think about the motivations and the desired end goal, actions and lack of actions both have consequences
Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes.
Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.
Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
They've now hidden the label, but Wildberries carry almost a 1/4 million items tagged "Everything for the SMO" ("special military operation"), so hardly a civilian target. Ukraine has been highly disciplined in going after military targets, other than energy, which of course also feeds the Russian war machine.
There is a big difference between starting fires in a warehouse which gives most people a chance to escape, and being like the Russians who were murdering and raping civilians in Dobas etc, firing missiles non-stop into civilian areas of Kyiv.
exactly today, a major farmer demonstration was already planned. They way they usually go ahead in the Netherlands is drive with their tractors over the highways towards The Hague, where our government is based. Obviously this leads to massive traffic jams.
A simultaneous disruption of the Dutch railways would add some extra effect to the expected traffic chaos.
44 person injured and a young woman between life and death. Yet when the perpetrators are caught, we'll have journalists and judges relaying the official tune of the EU: "criminals are victims too".
They'll get a slap on the wrist and be able to ruin society again in no time.
When shall the left accept that people putting 300 kilograms of rails to try to kill people has only one solution: shackles and a heavy ball?
Where do you draw the line between "we're all beautiful butterflies" and "some psychos need to be scruffed by the neck and bowed into lifetime submission"?
How many deaths?
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwn8mjl31p5yo
Next you'll say Russia invaded Ukraine because NATO "provoked it".
Also, very much unlikely to be related to the issue of activists sabotaging the Dutch railways. There's hardly a weekend which goes by without some activist group doing something stupid in the Netherlands, often 'climate' activists but sometimes others - 'palestine' being another popular 'cause'. In a Dutch newspaper there was a suggestion that this was related to upcoming actions by farmers but I doubt it, they tend to be more rational in their activism by taking to the motorways in their tractors to slow down (or stop) traffic.
[0] https://nos.nl/liveblog/2631038-hooibalen-in-brand-langs-sne...
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjx2zgk7edlzo
Do that to the US Navy and you will find yourself the target of a flare too.
No, the USN generally does not shoot flares directly at people, but just near them, because i expect them to be professionals and aware of the damage a flare can make when it hits a helicopter and sets it alight...
> he US Navy just shoots down aircraft who come close. :). Famous example: Vincennes shot down Iran Air 655, kill
Ok now im sure that you are a russian troll. You have one (1) example from decades ago. Russia/Iran downed 3 in the last decade alone and a lot more during the cold war...
And Arming Ukraine IS the neutral position because good people support victims of aggression.
> Even the U.S. Navy ships fire warning flares at other vessels when they approach close.
Yes. A helicopter is not a vessel. These kind of monitoring exercises are common amongst both Russians and Americans when operating near each other or their territorial waters.
Russians frequently overfly American and NATO craft. Russia has also been committing acts of sabotage around the world, but more specifically has been cutting undersea communication cables, so they are absolutely worthy of scrutiny.
The Russian Ambassador to Denmark stated that Russia would “thoroughly investigate all the circumstances of the incident”. That's not exactly a hardline statement indicating Russia knows it was in the right.
Do note that the later investigations did not establish Russian responsibility and investigators found no evidence of Russian sabotage. Refer to WSJ & Reuters articles on this. Can you point me to a specific incident in which Russian sabotage was established ?
https://nos.nl/liveblog/2631038-nog-steeds-nieuwe-sabotageac... (Use google translate to read)
(I'd assume the BBC reporter to be aware that Prinsjesdag is today, and that they'd mention that fact in this article, but apparently not.)
It seems as if one ambiguates the other.
(Some media literally blamed putin because people voted for afd in the recent state election in germany).
People just want a nice cozy job, enough money to get an apartment/house, buy the basics they need and live in a safe environment. If you provide those, no one is looking for alternatives.... when one of your bigger companies announces letting go of 100k people in the next few years, when you need concrete blocks protecting your chistmas markets, when you're deciding between eating and paying for diesel for your car to get to work, then you're looking for Alternatives.
Interestingly this mechanism contributed a lot to Brexit in my opinion, whenever there was legislation the politicians wanted to enact but knew would be unpopular with the voters they'd blame the EU and wring their hands saying there was nothing to be done, while in the background gold-plating the legislation far beyond what the EU was even asking for. This also made it easy for populists to point to many absurd examples of the EU being comically bureaucratic, when a lot of the more nonsensical ones were literally domestic additions. When the referendum happened, the consequences were obvious to everyone.
While no Brexiteer myself, I personally would want to see the European Parliament get a lot more powers and influence before I threw my wholehearted support behind rejoining. Half the problem with the EU is that it's seen as not particularly democratic as a place for legislation to originate, and giving the elected organ more power (including the power to propose legislation in its own right, and dismiss legislation proposed by the Commission with much more prejudice) would go a long way to addressing that I think. The Parliament needs to be more, well, parliamentary in how it functions.
The day on which the reigning monarch of the Netherlands addresses a joint session of the States-General of the Netherlands (consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives) to give the Speech from the Throne (Dutch: Troonrede), similar to the annual State of the Union in the United States or the British State Opening of Parliament. This speech sets out the main features of government policy for the coming parliamentary session.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prinsjesdag
If this is XR, would be very dumb and against their message.
Russia may have heard about that annual event as well, of course.
Is "troonrede" essentially just the Dutch pronunciation of "Throne read"?
And yes, troon == throne.
Solovyov propaganda is pure nuclear revenge fantasy: https://youtu.be/dA4RP3uID6Q?is=ApmFQtgZvY7mWajP
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjx2zgk7edlzo
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
What one can do is provide accurate information on the one hand, and maybe flag the topic on the other.
https://www.propublica.org/article/donald-trump-jr-wedding-b...
Humans are useful, easily manipulated operatives in the medium AIs are conversant in and we already have evidence of agents doing exactly this in arguing for PR requests (likely with prompting by an operator but still).
Last that I checked, Dutch farmers are in an existential struggle with the government. I wonder how Russia disinforms them.
If the garbage men started dumping the contents of garbage bags in public places I bet they will not be given a free pass.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025%E2%80%932026_Birmingham_b...
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cqxlxv0vvnxo
This is russian sabotage + russian trolls now trying to make it look like it's something else
There have been a number of attacks in Europe of the form "deranged person drives vehicle into crowd". I'm sure the police wouldn't sit back and shrug if that was done with a tractor. The vehicle doesn't have magic properties, the driver has police protection.
And how is the "vehicle driven into crowd" even relevant here? Nobody's using these tractors to kill (intentionally), but they're just many and hard to stop.
One weird trick: simply commit an offense in front of the police, and suddenly they can't do anything because it's "too hard".
Meanwhile, trash piles up quickly: https://nltimes.nl/2023/02/07/utrecht-garbage-strike-comes-e...
I mean, they wouldn't have to, they just need to stop cleaning it up. Such an action likely will be given a free pass, anything other than that is strikebreaking which is either illegal or heavily discouraged depending on jurisdiction.
Go drink some vodka Vasily.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/alcohol-c...
One has to be an idiot to assume otherwise at this point
Brilliant reply. Maybe if they stop attacking half of Europe, we'll stop thinking about them daily.
It’s so much more likely to be the farmers, but it's easier to blame Putin and do nothing about it than it is to stop ruining the farmers and risk angering the cosmopolitan politicians whose votes in the parliament you need.
HN is successful enough to be on the radar of Russian troll factories eh?
If you're on the side of history that North Korea supports, you're on the wrong side of it.
What makes that true, and not the propaganda about western degeneracy? What about the propaganda about Ukraine being ruled by Nazis? What about the propaganda about Ukraine being ruled by Jews? What about Russia being the defenders of the white race and traditional values? What about the propaganda about Ukraine just being a confused Russians? What about the propaganda about restoring the historical lands of Russia? What about the propaganda about Ukraine preparing to attack Russia? What about the propaganda about the supposed oppression of Russian speakers in Ukraine?
And ultimately, are you familiar with the term "firehose of falsehood"? Because unless you are really familiar with the subject and not just sprinkled by superficial propaganda, you might just believe the bits you agree with and ignore the rest, falling into the confirmation bias that Russian propaganda relies so much upon.
Like a great statesman once said: "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists."
https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/5469617
Some local context: Today is "prinsjesdag" when the budget is announced. Protests are common, particularly when sensitive decisions are made. There are multiple organized protest movements in the country that have used physical force in the past and some of them had announced protests for today.
Could it be Russia? Yes. But local protests seem significantly more likely. Moreover, if I were Putin I wouldn't expose my foreign agents this physically. I would use them in much more insidious ways such as actually starting or supporting these protest movements. In a similar vein: Could any shooting in the US be caused by foreign agents? Maybe. But usually there is a much simpler explanation; guns and bitterness.
You are jumping to the assumption that foreign agents wouldn't be exposed, but any willing idiot can be bought to conduct such activity. Recent research in Denmark showed that sabotage comes, most likely, from locals, persuaded by foreign actors.
So two things could be true at once. A local 'protestor', disengaged through some issue (whether climate, farming or anything else), persuaded to join some 'resistance' by anyone.
I don't expect this to be supported by local protesting groups, like FDF or XR, either. Way too risky, media-wise.
https://www.rtvslo.si/crna-kronika/na-zelezniski-progi-iz-ce...
It makes more sense that this is a continent wide action taken by Russia, considering the similar event in France just a few days ago.
They have a whole political doctrine about it. It's crazy identity politics.
Part of Putin's war on Ukraine is that he doesn't want them to think of themselves as European either (although they obviously are).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasia#Russian_geopolitical_i...
No idea when it would start but there are only two outcomes I can see:
* Russia doesn't use nukes and get flattened. They don't have the troops, material or finances to deploy on even half the frontline.
* Russia use nukes and get flattened (and so does a chunk of EU). French doctrine when it come to nuclear warfare is quite agressive. Not idea how london would react, but major russian cities and/or ressource hubs would see retalations on kind.
I don't know how much support or opposition from the population such actions would have, but people are getting fed up with external threat burning so much of our governments time and attention on external issues (brexit, babysitting trump, russian threat) that internal issues get further pushed to the future.
I would add 'Western-' to that. The Eastern Europeans are keenly aware, have been for years.
- Dutch person.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Nazi_Germany#National_...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_Laws#Text_of_the_law...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Days_of_Repentance
I appreciate that you know what is going on near you and in your homeland. As the saying could go, "think locally, speak globally"? I am sorry that I have allowed the bigger picture, or mere coincidence and happenstance, to cloud my opinion of your yearly ceremony and the annoying disruption to your daily commute.
I think it would be of a stretch to actually claim that this specific incident caused loss of life, but it’s possible to see how such wide sabotage, especially conducted over a number of days, could result in compromised emergency services and result in loss of life.
Protests also tend to be more effective if the protesters involved actually make some clear demands about what they want. Simply breaking shit isn’t much of a protest.
Anyway, I am surprised the BBC blogger didn't add north koreans and some linked it to porn on the internet.
Basically, the current system works by injecting a small current signal on one rail and trying to sense it on the other rail. A train's axle shorts the rails together, so sensing it means a train is present. Or, in this instance of sabotage, a jumper wire.
ERTMS L2, which is being installed over the next decade or two, primarily uses axle counters and train position reporting, so a jumper won't do a thing. You can still fool an axle counter, but that's rather easy to fix: just drive a known-good train over the section.
I was like hmmmm what timeline am I in now?